What The Heart Desires by Erica Storm

Chapter 1
    I had a bad night last night and now I can’t get out of bed, but I manage and go in to work. It started when I visited my fiancé’s night club with a girlfriend from work. I’m a low level bank manager who rarely has time to go anywhere or do anything, but at Tamika’s insistence I thought what could a little drinking and dancing hurt? As a matter of fact it might do me some good to some place and see what’s going on outside of the bank.  
    Don’t believe in banker’s hours. They don’t exist for people like me. We work from sun up to sundown especially if you have a boss like mine, who likes to take off and go shopping with two hours lunch breaks, where I have to oversee the tellers and Ok business checks.
    I’m usually exhausted in the evenings when I get home. Then I cook for my fiancé, Troy. He likes home cook meals.
    Living with a handsome black man who thinks women are made to serve and obey him wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I met Troy, a successful businessman, but I got used to it. He owns several restaurants and clubs in Manhattan and spends many days and nights overseeing every movement of his business.
    I got off early Friday because the bank manager said that I could take off because the auditors were coming in, and Monday would be my day to work until eight pm.
    Tamika had her purse ready when she stood at my desk. “What the F are you doing?” We are off early and we can go drinking and dancing for once and have dinner before we go to Troy’s club. We should be out of the door by now. Isn’t he out of town anyway?”
    “He said he was.”
    “Good then. Now get your ass up and we can get out of here before they stop us at the door and say there’s some kind of mistake.” Tamika grabs my arm and I stand looking for my keys and purse. 
    “We can have a little fun at Troy’s club tonight before he gets back. I don’t know why you put up with his shit anyway? He acts like your daddy or something. Tells you what to wear, where to go, and when to go out.” Tamika is still complaining about Troy and the job as we head out the office down the escalator.
    “I know Tamika but I need some structure in my life.”
    “If you want some structure, then commit a crime and go to prison. You’ll get less structure there than being with him.” Tamika made a lot of sense but it worked for us and I didn’t want to rock the boat. Besides, Troy didn’t care for Tamika as much as she didn’t like him. I wasn’t about to make things worse by telling her that. But she probably knew it anyway and didn’t care.
    Tamika would call at our apartment trying to get me to go clubbing with her and piss Troy off and the arguments would start.
    She stood in front of me in the lobby, “Ok. Let’s go to dinner.” We walked outside that tomb of a bank into the fresh spring air. It had a feel of summer but I knew before the day was over that the temperatures would plunge so I carried a coat.
    Tamika wanted to have dinner in an outdoor café and the coat would come in handy. We sat and ordered seafood. Scallops over peas and rice and clams. We were sitting waiting for our order when a limo passed. “Now that is what I call class,” she says to me. “If I could bag one of those rich men, I would quit the bank today.”
    “And how do you plan on doing that?”
    “Just dreaming out loud,” she says to me. “I hear you have a better chance of meeting one if you’re a stripper.” And she raises her eyebrows.
    “A what?”
    “You know, a stripper.”
    “Where you take off your clothes and parade in front of men who have no respect for you?” I questioned.
    “Do you think the way Troy treats you is respect? He probably has some woman spread eagle over his desk now, and you wouldn’t even know it the way he has your schedule planned out.”
    “You are over reaching Tamika. Troy loves me and I love him.”
    “If you want to stay in a fool’s paradise, for be it for me to drag you out of